Don't get burned by your leather furniture

As we reported before (Is your leather sofa making you sick) packets of dimethyl fumarate (DMF) are sometimes attached to leather furniture to inhibit mold growth during storage and shipping.  These packets are supposed to be removed at retail.  Mold-free furniture is all well and good, but peeling skin and hideous rashes, not so much. As it turns out, DMF causes really terrible skin reactions in most people. Recently, leather sofas packed with DMF have been linked to cases of difficult-to-treat eczema, respiratory problems, and severe chemical burns.
  
Although the DMF starts out in its packet, body heat can vaporize the chemical and toxic vapors can then seep into the leather. There have been multiple reports of people getting serious chemical burns after merely sitting on a sofa that contained a DMF packet.
 
Who knew that being a couch potato could cause such distress?  Certainly not the rash-riddled owners who unwittingly continued to use their sofas even after the symptoms first appeared.
 
DMF was prohibited from being used in production in the European Union. But following a recent spate of leather-furniture problems, it's no longer allowed in imported goods either. In England, a class-action lawsuit has been brought against a furniture retailer that imported sofas with DMF.  No such ban exists in the U.S., but legislation proposing one (HR 3080) has been introduced in by California representative Jackie Speier.
 
After our first story on this subject about a year ago, CU has received many complaints of symptoms matching those reported in England, so there's no reason to believe that leather furniture in the U.S. is free from DMF.
 
We at Consumers Union recommend that you be vigilant when shopping for sofas.  Be sure to ask whether DMF packets are used and check for yourself if any have been left behind, and if so, be wary about purchasing that model.  We're very interested in hearing about any issues our readers might have with leather furniture and DMF, so please report any incidents to us in the comment section of this blog. 
 
--Jason Harary
 

Update: August 17, 2010

Many of the comments we received on this blog post asked about what the packets of DMF look like and where they can be found. Since we have not yet had first hand experience with these packets, we couldn't report on this with any certainty. Thanks to reader "RB" who alerted us to a video from the UK that answers these questions. From the video, it appears that the packets look much like the silca gel packets that are often shipped with electronic goods and shoes. But to find them, you might have to rip open the fabric ticking on the underside of the furniture.